See a gun, pick it up
Matte blackness under fluorescent lights. A shape that promised violence. He felt the memories waking up just looking at it. But Nova was right, they were hazy and vague. Dreamlike. Muzzle flash in dusty darkness. EP’s voice in his ears, words unintelligible. Blood and brains, and the smell of them.
He picked up the gun and remembered it all, instantly.
But something was different. The memories were dead. He could recall in bright detail everything that happened from the morning panic to the shooting and right up to the cold plunge of the Propofol, but, the memories were… lonely. They were just images. The feelings that had engorged them in the moment were replaced by a dull nostalgia.
The self, that voice whispering to him all day long, interjecting its concerns, fears, desires, and at the end, begging for its salvation, was gone. His spirit was alone, free to analyze without distraction. As exciting as it was to run through the memories undisturbed, it felt like entering the empty house of a dead friend.
“Fucking Christ.”
“You alright, bro?” Nova asked.
“Yeah. It’s just… god damn.”
“He’s seeing them for the first time with just his Spirit,” Lindsey said. “It’s jarring, but you’ll get used to it, Gradie”
“Your Spirit will absorb some of the memories,” Angel said. “But it will distort them with time.”
“So, can my Spirit remember?” It seemed a stupid question, but with the memories of the office job still lighting up in his mind, everything was suspect.
“I don’t know,” Philip laughed. “You remember walking into that room?”
“Yes, your Spirit remembers,” Lindsey said wearily. “But like Angel said it’s resistant to holding memories from the Hardworlds. Your memories of the Real get in the way, especially for a Spirit as new as yours. It doesn’t like remembering two lives. But, if you review the memories here in the Otherworld, the Spirit can remember experiencing them. They become a memory of something that happened here, in a way.”
“Exactly, which also makes them more fluid,” Nova said. “So you gotta be sure to check at the source from time to time. Try and catch any changes.”
Gradie accepted that explanation more because he needed it to be true in order for his Hardworlding career to progress, than because he actually understood it.
Absent-mindedly, for no other reason than he was holding it, perhaps, he aimed the pistol at the far wall and fired.
The noise was muffled and cut off in the center, as if he was still wearing the earbuds, but the flash was just as massive as it had been in the basement, though not quite as brilliant due to the overhead fluorescent lights. The casing went rolling off across the polished concrete floor and shattered glass dropped out of a shelf in the far wall.
“Having fun?” Philip asked dryly
“Yeah bro, I know what you’re thinking. It’s all accurate,” Nova said proudly. “You can get a feel for almost every gun on the planet here. It’s pretty—”
“Better off shooting in the Hardworlds,” Philip grumbled.
“So yall make the guns we use?” Gradie asked, ejecting the mag and running his finger along the top brass.
“They don’t make shit in the Hardworlds.” Philip sounded offended.
“As pissy as he is, Philip is right,” said Angel. “We don’t make the guns the way you’re thinking. We provide you with the memory to help you push a self with experience using them. We make them in your mind, I guess you could say.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
It was Nova’s turn to sound offended.
“At least we would make them in your mind, if Philip or anybody besides EP ever came around.”
“I was just here for that bomb!” Philip snapped. “And what do you think you kids can show me about guns? I know about every gun that’s ever thrown lead.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t even touch the Vault last time! And It’s not just guns!” Nova sounded like he was jumping around. “We’re working on anti-IR shit, drone jamming—”
Gradie picked up the casing and felt the warmth in his palm, letting their discussion fade into white noise. He stepped over to the glass at the far wall and ran his finger along the frayed wood around the bullet hole. A question snuck up on him.
“Why doesn’t it drop out?”
“What?” Angel asked, Nova still gabbing on behind him.
“Like a fragment,” Gradie said. “If this place is so realistic, shouldn’t it drop out into the Hardworlds.
There was a pause and some whispering. Gradie thought he heard Michael’s name.
“Fragments don’t actually drop into the Hardworlds,” Angel said. “It’s the spirit that moves. You just happen to drop into a part of the Hardworlds that looks exactly like the fragment you used to make the jump.”
“And it ain't the fragment that does the work,” Philip said. “You would have to know that the room is already in the Hardworlds. These kids can make the room as real as they want, it won't do shit if you don’t have an iron grip on your Spirit. Which you won’t have for a long time, so just forget you ever heard about fragments.”
Gradie felt a similar annoyance. Once again, it seemed Michael had simplified things and misled him. Maybe it wasn’t his fault. From Michael's point of view, with his years of experience, it all probably did seem that simple. And he had admitted to having no idea how to deal with newbies. Then why take him on?
“Ok, next up is some basic ops shit, bro,” Nova said. “There’s some other stuff on that table.”
Gradie set the gun down in the broken case and felt the memories settle. It was like having a nagging thought or worry go silent in an instant. He could still remember that day, but it was more like remembering himself thinking about it moments ago, than remembering experiencing it. The images and sensations had lost their edge. He found himself reaching back for the gun. Nova stopped him.
“Hold up, man. We’re onto something else now. Lingering and getting all nostalgic is not a good habit to get into.”
“Grab the keys first, please,” Angel said, his tone a bit too much like commanding a dog for Gradie’s liking. The more they talked, the more Gradie sensed that degree of separation he felt when EP spoke to him over the earbuds, a separation that Philip and Lindsey lacked.
A key fob on a ring waited for him on the table, next to some other things he hadn’t noticed in his excitement at seeing the gun. He picked up the keys and his mind took off.
He remembered the locations and contents of every compartment, saw the back hatch rise and fall, felt the weight of the doors in his hands as they swung open, an urgent sense of danger humming in the back of his mind. He saw rounds paint white circles on the windows, heard them strike the body and clatter around the undercarriage.
With the pseudo memories came the feeling of discovery, concentrated and distilled, like learning to drive and taking the cops on a chase all in the space of a heartbeat. It was ecstasy. He laughed out loud.
“Yeah, bro, I know,” Nova said. “Better than sex and drugs and all that shit.”
“Take some time and really run your mind over it,” Angel advised. “The Spirit can absorb mem instantly, like the memory of a day in the Real, but you need to experience the memory for it to stick. Can you remember all the entering and exiting procedures?”
The word “procedures” stuck in Gradie’s head and latched on to memories of leaping out of the SUV at 40 mph, sliding into the back seat with a weapon and firing out the door, even rolling into the back as the hatch slammed closed. Those memories latched on to others like a thing building itself, and he saw himself lay down cover fire as another operator (who started out faceless, but morphed into Luke) slid into the driver’s seat, dropped behind the door to reload, and countless other scenarios, all in an instant. It seemed too easy.
“It’s like I dreamed it—”
“That’s a good sign,” said Angel. “We scrub the memory down to its essentials. Helps the Spirit create a narrative around it to give it context. Think of it like—”
“Don’t think of it like shit,” Philip said. “Let’s move on.”
Gradie set the keys down on the table. As the memory of the SUV faded from vibrant daydream to hazy echo, a question jumped into the gap.
“Why the fuck didn’t I do this before?”
“When?” Nova asked.
“Before the first job!”
“Cause you need to get the basics down first,” Philip snapped. “Like not dropping out the moment you drop in. I still think this shit is premature.”
“Philip’s kinda right bro,” Nova said. “You need both. If you try to run and gun just based on what your spirit remembers, it’ll be like trying to crack a safe because you saw someone else do it. You need to push a self with that knowledge, and this training gives you something to build a self around.”
Once again, Gradie was sorry he’d asked. He resolved, then and there, to just do what they said, and not think twice about anything until he was the best Hardworlder any of them had ever seen.
“Alright, what’s this?” He picked up a black nylon strap with a stick on the side, and instantly knew.